Curacao’s 10-10-10 kerfuffle

The birthday of the new autonomous country Curacao, was not celebrated.

The 10-10-10- date was picked with Cabalistic numeric precision. The triple ten, as the touch with a magic want, guaranteed a great future full of towering successes. Huge oil and natural gas reserves, hidden deeply underneath the island, promised golden mountains of near unlimited wealth. Hotels with thousands of rooms would sprout up from the island's waste lands. Tens of thousands of highly educated natives, presently living scattered around the world , would repatriate and new cities would be constructed to house them. A flamboyant Prime Minister of the micro nation stepped into the glare of spotlights onto the world political podium to mediate between Venezuelan's Bolivarian revolution president Hugo Chavez and USA president Obama. Russians, Chinese and MIddle East businessmen were all lined up waiting their turn to contribute to Paradise Curacao, the newest nation of the world..

But within a few years, all illustrious dreams turned to dust. No oil or gas could be located and no company in the world was ready to spend the money on exploration. The mega hotels turned out to be a German Ponzi -scheme and a stock market scam. Only a trickle of a few hundred natives repatriated and no new cities were built. The flamboyant Prime Minister had to face his own palace revolution and tried to cling to power with a coup d'etat , only to be defeated. His successor, a belligerent populist Chavista follower, lasted for less than nine months before he was assassinated on yet another bewitched date, the 5th of the 5th month, at 5 pm, most likely by his own following.

The autonomous micro nation, that only three years ago, bolstered 19th- century nationalistic pride, and relished in symbol politics with flags, parades, pomp and circumstance and even craved for a seat in the United Nations and its own Olympic Team, was deadly quiet at 10-10-13. Four governments and two parliaments , waves of crime and a consequent erosion of its tourist economy brought the island down to its knees.

Today, It has to face the ugly truth that the 10-10-10 kerfuffle was no more than a name plate reshuffle.